At various points during the saga, it felt like Nancy Grace should have been doing an on-location talk show for 10 straight nights.

“Peyton Manning: The NFL Hostage Crisis.”

Dean Spanos watched much of the same television coverage, participated in the same type of conversations and was simultaneously engrossed and repulsed just like the rest of us as Manning’s search for a new team played out.

Spanos, though, felt it deeper than most.

He saw a madness behind the madness.

“I think it’s been going on for a long time,” the Chargers President said on Friday. “Agents have a lot of control over different teams. It depends on who the agents are.”

In this case, Tom Condon, the same agent the Chargers faced off against in one of the highest-profile draft showdowns in NFL history.

The web site for Creative Artists Agency, of which Condon is a principal in the football division, boasts that its “(c)lients include nearly 50% of the starting quarterbacks in the NFL, seven of the last nine NFL MVPs, 19 players selected to the 2012 Pro Bowl, and six of the last eight #1 overall picks in the NFL Draft.”

Impressive, indeed.

And perhaps detrimental to the game – though in no small part because some teams seemingly cede power to agents who represent many of their players and coaches.

“An agent is only powerful, manipulative and influential if you allow it,” Chargers General Manager A.J. Smith said. “… There is no ‘we’ in the (agent-team) relationship. The most important aspect of this whole deal is the team. That’s all that ever matters.”

Spanos and Smith have been there, done that.

In 2004, the Chargers held the first pick in the draft and were presumed to be eyeing Mississippi quarterback Eli Manning. But after a meeting with Eli’s father, Archie, which the Chargers thought went well, the team received a call from Condon saying Eli would not play for the Chargers.

Over time, the story came out that the Mannings questioned the Chargers’ commitment to winning and were concerned about uncertainty regarding whether they would even stay in San Diego.

The Chargers believe the power play was, above all else, a matter of Condon not wanting to place Manning on the same team as then-Chargers quarterback Drew Brees.

A series of meetings with Archie Manning and phone calls with Condon resulted in no progress. The Chargers ultimately drafted Manning and worked out a deal to trade him to the New York Giants for Philip Rivers and other draft picks. All along, the Chargers felt the Mannings and Condon had steered Eli toward New York.

Smith and Spanos won’t talk specifics now, but the perceived attempt to manipulate their business lingers and has been addressed over the years.

The Chargers have since ’04 done multiple contracts with Condon clients, including with Tomlinson and Antonio Gates. But it is no coincidence that the team does not negotiate with agents for coaches, and there can be no denying that Smith’s philosophy regarding the team’s hard-line stance in negotiations was shaped in those months.

“A player could be represented by super-agent Tom Condon or his next-door neighbor,” Smith said this week. “It really is the same procedure for us. You either like what you’re hearing from us, or you don’t.”

Thankfully for the Chargers, Vice President Ed McGuire is the front man in all contract matters.

Said Smith: “He does a great job of engaging in endless dialogue – and always ending up in the same spot we want. Some people call this negotiating. I call it a great waste of energy.”

In contrast to Smith’s dogmatic view, Spanos articulates a reasoned argument in which he praises Condon yet questions whether such powerful agents and agencies are good for the game due to their ability to “manipulate teams and affect a team’s makeup for years to come.”

Among CAA’s clients are Manning and Tim Tebow, the new and former quarterbacks of the Denver Broncos. Also a CAA client is Alex Smith, still the quarterback in San Francisco.

While Manning was being courted by the Broncos, 49ers and Tennessee Titans, Tebow stood by and Smith left an offer on the table in San Francisco to hear out the Miami Dolphins.

After Manning finally decided on the Broncos, Smith returned to San Francisco and Tebow was fairly quickly shipped off to the New York Jets.

The latter move did not become final until a contract issue was worked out and Tebow’s hometown Jacksonville Jaguars made a public play for his services. Afterward, Tebow said he had no say in where he went, but Broncos Vice President of Football Operations John Elway said Tebow’s camp did have a choice.

It was not seen as coincidence in league circles that Jets head coach Rex Ryan’s agent is Jimmy Sexton, who when he joined CAA brought with him a number of high-profile clients, including Tebow.

It is, at least, worthy of note that Tebow ended up in the Big Apple, the media capitol of the world, the same place Eli Manning went after saying he would refuse to play for the Chargers in 2004.

In San Diego, certainly, what unfolded with CAA’s quarterback clients over the past few weeks was viewed through lenses still clouded by the ignominy of scorn and the still-festering annoyance over a perceived coup attempt.

“How can those not be conflicts of interest?” Spanos said. “And how can those agents not manipulate the market and manipulate the teams? It’s very problematic for me, because I’ve had it happen to me. And you see it going on right now.”

Condon, Sexton and Ben Dogra, the men atop CAA, must be doing a number of things very well to oversee the livelihoods of more than 150 players and coaches. And while it certainly wouldn’t appear to be a problem to the free agents for which CAA helped secure hundreds of millions of dollars over the past two weeks alone, there is always at least the specter of impropriety when one group wields so much influence.

The topic, in fact, was brought up in numerous media accounts.

Speaking specifically of the Manning-Smith situation in San Francisco, former agent Joe Fortenbaugh wrote in a commentary for the National Football Post that appeared in USA Today: “If (Condon’s) job is to put the best interest of his clients above all else, how can he possible do what’s right for both players when they are seemingly competing for the same position on the same team?”

Condon did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Neither did the NFL Players Association, which regulates agents.

Dogra was quoted by the Sports Business Journal in December as saying, “If we didn’t feel like we could service our players, we would stop signing them.”

Spanos acknowledged CAA is not doing anything explicitly wrong, and he predicted it would be extremely difficult to effect any changes in rules regarding agents representing multiple clients on the same team.

“He’s very good at what he does,” Spanos said of Condon. “He’s the premiere agent in this league … And in this business, you’re always better off dealing with the smartest agents. If they’re smart you’re going to get a deal done.”

Spanos’ concern, of course, is from a team point of view and what can happen when an agency seems to be behind the curtain.

“It’s inconceivable how an agent can come in and have control and can represent your four or five best players,” Spanos said.

Again, he’s lived it.

That the Chargers were held hostage in 2004 by the Manning family and Condon does not mean Spanos is inherently wrong or should be disqualified from having an opinion. In fact, his opinion is quite informed on the matter.

While Spanos sincerely believes things turned out well for the Chargers – that he and Smith stood their ground and ended up getting what they wanted -- it is no less troubling to him.

“It’s a bad situation, where certain teams are controlled by agents with key coaches and key players,” Spanos said. “It’s certainly a problem we need to continue to address … There are other owners that feel the same.”